It just so happens that two months before Katrina I was going to Florida from Texas to help my brother in his storm damage repair/remodel business. He was in Florida working to repair structures that had been damaged during the 2004 hurricane season.

I was in no hurry to get to Florida and decided I'd take the scenic route, rather than the Interstate. I hadn't been to the Biloxi area since I was a small child and, driving along Hwy 90 on the Gulf of Mexico towards Biloxi, I remembered my last visit to this town 30 years ago, when the Biloxi Light was a wonder to behold for an imaginative and adventurous ten-year-old boy.

Seeing that light again that day brought back memories of that childhood that seemed so long ago. I sat there at the base of that light and waxed nostalgic, tears for the longing of that youth so long gone forming in my eyes. I lingered there, taking pictures of a town and its attractions whose only connection to me was that it provided a very nice memory from my childhood. Then, I pressed on towards Florida feeling...rejoiced and invigorated.

Little did I know what the fate that awaited this seaside village.

Two months later, on August 28, I was back home in N. Texas watching the satellite images of Katrina on NOAA's weather site, thinking how bad it was going to be for New Orleans and my friends there in St. Bernard's Parish. It did not even occur to me that Biloxi was in the crosshairs because I was so concerned about my friend Glenn and his wife in SBP. I had misplace his phone number but was confident they had fled the area.

Then, on Monday Aug 29, 2005, disaster strikes. In the following days, of course, everyone watches the disaster-after-the-disaster unfold and it becomes apparent that my sentimental little town by the sea has suffered a serious defeat to the storm.

Two weeks later, my brother calls and says "You want to go to Biloxi, Mississippi with me?" Of course, I couldn't refuse. I'd go without pay if I had to.

We convoyed down there with 20 trucks, three trailer loads of bottled water, 60 people and a few utility trailers full of tools. But all the preparation in the world could not prepare us for what we found when we got there.

Our actual project was in D'Iberville helping to clean up the Catholic Diocese there just two weeks after the storm hit. Take if from me, the place looked like it had been passed through a meat grinder. It was the most profound and depressing experience I've ever been through, and I was just there working and had a home to come home to here in Texas.

Yes, if Blowhard Limbo thinks the damage to Mississippi was minimal and of no consequence, he's an idiot. Well, he's an idiot as a matter of course, but I digress.

But he is completely blinded by the Right Wing. He owns a jewelry store in a very upscale town next to ours. He's making money hand-over-fist from Hummer driving trophy wives and he doesn't see any problems with the economy.

"Yeah, what about your other jewelry store in NRH?" I asked one evening.

"We closed that one down. Weren't making any money there."

The other store was his first and it had been doing well for years, but it was in a working-class town and people just weren't shopping for jewelry that much any more. He opened a new store in a rapidly-expanding town that went on to have average (average!) house prices over $340,000.

So he thinks Bush is golden because his business in a Republican-infested town is going good.

Oh, and he also doesn't believe in Peak Oil, Global Warming or overpopulation. But he damn sure loves football and NASCAR.

Karen Eugene applied to FEMA in March for an all-electric handicapped trailer after her doctor put her on 24-hour oxygen and told her she could no longer live in the propane-fueled travel trailer she'd been provided. The agency called her just this past week to say her new home was ready.

"I'm not saying I want to be first ... but I mean you work it to where this lady's medical condition is putting her in a different bracket than all these other people," says Eugene, 50, who has diabetes, arthritis, congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. "I was told by maybe five, six different people in two weeks, `You'll have your trailer.' I'll go back in two weeks, and that person I talked to no longer works with FEMA. ...

"I can't run around with FEMA no longer."

Best not to tell Mr. Freeper that, though. It might turn him back against stem cell research.

and:The local Government is totally responsible for what happened. The feds tried their hardest to help, but were stymied by the horrible local democrats and Governor. The locals spent all of their levy repair/maintenance money on crap make work projects or dredging. I have heard all of these. The meme is always the same.

Mississippi coast got hit by the strongest winds in Katrina, New Orleans got hit by lesser winds. Mississippi coast didn't have levys to protect from that storm surge so no levys to break and flood lowlying areas, so experienced the direct storm surge. Have you seen pictures or been to the Mississippi coast? What are you talking about?

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